


Washed

by starrynightshade



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Miscarriage, Originally Posted on Tumblr, post s8 e5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 14:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18853129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrynightshade/pseuds/starrynightshade
Summary: Arya learns what revenge costs.





	Washed

She beats him to Storm’s End somehow. Perhaps it’s because her new horse seems to fly rather than gallop. Perhaps it because she’s really buried under a pile of rubble in King's Landing and the entire journey has been a grand illusion to distract her from the pain.

 

Surely her mind would have come up with a better escape though?

 

She drifts through the castle like a shadow all day, just waiting for him. Three times she nearly loses her nerve and sets her sights on Winterfell instead. Still, she convinces herself to stay. Sandor had told her to live and that’s what she was going to fucking do, no matter how much it hurt.

 

He arrives in the middle of the night, though she can’t fathom why. Half of her wants to fling herself into his arms the second he’s in view and the other half wants to run and hide until she can escape. Instead she watches torches and lanterns dance around the courtyard as he dismounts and his retinue follows suit.

 

She waits an hour, then another before she creeps down from her perch atop the great tower. She’s not surprised to find him in the lord’s chambers, but she is surprised to find him awake when she slips inside. His eyes meet hers from across the room and neither of them seems to know what to do next.

 

Finally, after what may have been a moment or an eternity, he whispers her name. She almost doesn’t hear it over the waves outside. Or maybe it’s the blood rushing in her ears.

 

He says it again when she doesn’t move, a little louder but just as awestruck. “Arya.”

 

The sound of it breaks her.

 

“I’m sorry,” she manages before everything comes crashing down around her like the flaming rubble that had damn near done her in.

 

She repeats it between sobs, melting into his arms and letting him catch her when the exhaustion of everything knocks her off her feet. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…_ What else is there to say?

 

“Arya, it’s alright.” He’s holding her close, though she wishes she could get closer, wishes she could melt right into him like snow on grass. “I never should have asked. That’s not you, I know.”

 

She pulls back a bit as she realizes what he's talking about. He thinks she means the proposal. He thinks she’s sorry for leaving without saying goodbye. He doesn’t know what she’s done.

 

He doesn’t know what she left Winterfell with.

 

He doesn’t know what she lost in King's Landing.

 

She realizes she’s going to have to tell him and the tears start anew.

 

Her body and soul had been a mottled mess of pain when she had left the carnage behind. Her lungs burned, her eyes stung, and there wasn’t an inch of skin that hadn’t been touched by the sharp edges of fallen rubble. So the pain in her stomach hadn’t seemed out of place, even as it worsened with every passing minute. When she finally stopped at the side of a river to clean the ash and blood from her hair, she realized that something was wrong.

 

She had no wound there, but blood was clinging to her thighs. She knelt at the river’s edge and did the math. She had always been good with numbers, but these she recounted over and over, hoping she was wrong. She wasn’t wrong.

 

Arya had pressed a hand to her stomach then, as if she could stop the little flicker of life she hadn’t even known about from being extinguished. She knew she couldn’t. It was already begun and she had no choice but to let it run its course.

 

The frigid water of the river and her horse had been the only ones to witness her tears...until now. Arya let them run out now, for she hadn’t had time for that at the river, and felt them soaking Gendry’s tunic.

 

 _Stupid girl_ , she admonished herself. _You could have given each other everything, but you wanted revenge_.

 

She finds she doesn’t have the words, so she takes his hand, still as warm and rough as she remembers, and places it where his child had been growing without her knowledge. He lets his hand splay out over her abdomen, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. One moment passes, then another, and realization dawns on his face only to be crushed by the devastation that follows.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says for what feels like the millionth time. “I didn’t know.”

 

She doesn’t remember the world going dark but when she wakes the next morning he’s still there, still holding her in his sleep as the rain outside pours down over the castle. It’s as if all of Storm’s End is being washed clean of the past. Arya retraces her steps from last night until she finds herself standing on the battlements at the top of the great tower.

 

She wants to be washed too.


End file.
